Iteration (Looping Constructs in VB)

Iteration: Groups of statements which are repeatedly

executed until a certain test is satisfied

Carrying out Iteration in VB programming, requires the

use of Looping Constructs

There are 2 main types of Looping Constructs:

Determinate Loops: will repeat themselves a known

(specific) number of times (For..Next Loops)

Indeterminate Loops: will repeat themselves an

unknown number of times (Do Loops) [Until; While]
 Determinate Loops
A group of statement is repeated a specific number of
times

For..Next Loops

Repeat the statements in a loop a specific number of

times
Each For statement has a corresponding Next
statement

For..Next
For Counter/LoopIndex LoopTosyntax:
= Start End [step step]
Statements (Body of Loop)
Next Counter/LoopIndex
 The For..Next loop uses the For and Next statements
and a Counter Variable [LoopIndex]

The elements of a For..Next:

The Counter/LoopIndex must be a numeric variable,
determines the number of times the statements inside
the loop will be executed

Start and End may be Constants, Variables, Numeric

Property Values, or Numeric Expressions, and further
determine the initial and final value of the counter

The optional word Step may be included, along with the

value to be added to the LoopIndex (positive/negative)
for each iteration of the loop, and if omitted, the default
value is 1 for each increment of the loop
Dim iLoopIndex As Integer
Dim iMaximum As Integer

iMaximum = Inputbox(“Enter the value”, Number of

Entries)

For iLoopIndex = 0 To iMaximum

‘The statements inside of the loop are indented, and
referred to as ‘the body of the loop
Next iLoopIndex
A Counter-Controlled Loop generally has 3 elements:

Initialise the Counter

Increment the Counter [step]
Test the Counter to determine when it is time to
Terminate the loop

For iIndex = 2 To 100 Step 2

will count from 2 to 100 by 2

The statements in the body of the loop will be executed
50 times, with iIndex = 2, 4, 6, ….

The program checks for greater than the test value and
not equal to
 Exiting For..Next Loops

If you enter an Endless Loop, the program execution

will have to be broken manually

Therefore, you will need to enter Break Time

Ctrl + Break

With For..Next loops, you may need to terminate the

loop before the loop index reaches its final value

VB provides an Exit For statement for this situation

Generally, an Exit For statement is part of an If

statement
For iLoopIndex = 1 To 10
If txtInput.Text = “ ” Then ‘nothing was entered into the input
textbox
MsgBox “You must enter something”
Exit For
End If
……….
………. ‘statements in the loop
Next iLoopIndex